Today’s New Sexist Thing: Glaciers

If you haven’t heard that literally everything is sexist, what rock have you been hiding under, and can I come join you under it? Today’s new sexist thing: our climate itself. Great, juuuuuust great.

According to a new study from scientists at the University of Oregon, women are more likely to be harmed by the progressive melting of the world’s glaciers than men are. You wouldn’t know that, though, since no experts are researching the gender angle of glaciers because there are so few women in the field.

The new Oregon study noted that women are more vulnerable to melting ice, both because there is a link between melting glaciers and an uptick in sexually transmitted diseases in women, and because in many places they are less mobile and more tethered to their homes than men are. When the researchers zoomed out to look at how glaciology research has been approached over the years, they found that “glacier research has been intertwined with gender relations, masculine cultures of exploration, geopolitics, and individual and institutional power. That, in turn, led to glacier-related academic and governmental jobs being predominantly filled by men.”